“The Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister is drawing up measures to prevent the ‘Soros Plan’ in preparation for its session in January”, Minister heading the Cabinet Office Antal Rogán said on Monday at his annual hearing before Parliament’s Justice Committee.

In response to criticism from the opposition, Mr. Rogán presented the notarial certificate that according to the Minister clearly and verifiably proves that 2 million 171 thousand 500 National Consultation questionnaires were received by post prior to the 5 December deadline. “This means that together with the 171,500 questionnaires that were submitted via the internet, some 2 million 300 thousand people voiced their opinions during the course of the National Consultation”, he added.

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“In view of the fact that the questionnaires processed so far clearly indicate that the vast majority of respondents reject the ‘Soros Plan’ and the restriction of Hungary’s sovereignty, steps must be taken in the interests of presenting the plan”, he told the Committee.

“This is the Government’s most important task today, and accordingly the Cabinet Office is working on drawing up the measures with which the implementation of George Soros’s ‘plan’ can be prevented in both Hungary and the territory of the European Union in time for its upcoming session in January”, he stressed.

Mr. Rogán said the Cabinet office was established to assist the work of the Prime Minister, and accordingly it is only natural that it should concentrate on this task. “The Government has wanted to be a government of job creation from the very beginning, and it is the Prime Minister’s firm belief that there can be no freedom without work, and that financial security is a primary requisite for the enforcement of freedoms and civil liberties”, he said.

“The Government has been involved in the creation of 700 thousand new jobs: while the number of people in employment was 3.7 million in 2010, the number of people working in Hungary is now some 4.5 million”, the Minister said.

“But it is not enough to create jobs; it is also important that working should be worth it, and this is why the Government embarked on its policy of tax cuts”, he added, noting that “the level of personal income tax has been reduced significantly to a flat rate of 15 percent”.

“The Government has striven to increase the lowest wages. The minimum wage was 73,500 forints in 2010, but is now 127,500 forints. Next year, it will have increased to a level that is 88 percent higher than it was in 2010”, Mr. Rogán said.
In addition to reducing personal income tax and introducing family tax benefits, the Minister said it was also important that the Government had succeeded in reducing corporation tax, which used to be extremely high.

“The family is still in first place; children are the most important to the Government”, he declared. Accordingly, the Government is helping families with targeted benefits such as free school meals and textbooks, he explained.

Citing surveys, Mr. Rogán listed data according to which 60-80 percent of the population regards the various measures introduced by the Government, such as its home creation policy and increasing the number of available nursery school places, as positive.

He stressed that Hungary’s sovereignty had been one of the most important issues of recent years. “An ambition to establish a United States of Europe has openly begun in Brussels”, he declared, adding: “The fact that they are increasingly opening up opportunities to make illegal migration legal is leading to a Europe that stands above nations”.

“However, the Hungarians have never consented to the country’s sovereignty being reduced through the transfer of increasing numbers of spheres of competence to Brussels. Hungary insists on the original basic European treaties”, he underlined.

“The Cabinet regards the instrument of the National Consultation as important because it regards democracy as important. People must be given the opportunity to voice their opinions, and I do not remember any previous Cabinets regularly giving people the opportunity to do so”, he added.

In reply to a question, Mr. Rogán also spoke about the fact that he will be calling for it to be made simpler for people to participate in the Government’s family home creation allowance (CSOK) scheme, the goal being to negate the need to acquire unnecessary documents. It should be enough for people to state, while fully aware of their criminal responsibility, that they conform to requirements.

The Justice Committee accepted the Minister’s report with a vote of eight for and five against, with no abstentions.

(MTI)